


Safe Harbours

by Amodelofefficiency



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-06 11:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12816858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amodelofefficiency/pseuds/Amodelofefficiency
Summary: To find something steady in this frantic, volatile world is all Alice has ever longed for. She thought she’d only find it in her work, or in the world of books. Never in a man. But Matthew is a safe harbour.  [AU in which they've been married 30 years]





	1. Safe Harbours

The house is quiet in the early morning. Alice lies awake wrapped in a tangle of sheets, ruminating on the journal she’d been reading late into the night and listening to the rhythm of Matthew’s breaths beside her.

He won’t wake for hours, not unless the sharp ring of the telephone interrupts his slumber, but Alice is often awake at this time, reading and researching, or watching his sleeping face.

He has a beautiful face. Perhaps not what others would call handsome. But kind eyes, and a smile that is precious to her with its rarity and candour. It’s an expressive face, even if those expressions are often shades of annoyance. She smiles at that, reaching out to brush a finger down the sharp line of his cheek; her grumpy man.

It’s been almost thirty years since she first caught his gaze across a room, Alice dressed as the Queen of Hearts and he as Sherlock Holmes. She’d stood in the corner of the room, content to watch the students twirl around her with saucers of champagne in hand and Duke Ellington playing on the phonograph.

“A Lewis Carroll fan, I presume?” His curious voice was marked with a hint of flirtation.

She couldn’t help but smile, “You’re the first person to guess correctly. Holmes, I presume?”

He shuffled uncomfortably, as if embarrassed.“I came off second best in a dare.”

“Oh?”

“Lawson. Constable Matthew Lawson.” He held out his hand.

“Oh,” she laughed. His hands were soft – a very new constable, she assumed.

“Alice Harvey.”

“ _No_.” His voice was quick, and she frowned, confused. For the first time since he’d started talking to her she felt that familiar swoop of anxiety in her stomach. Had she said something wrong?

But the smile on his face grew as he looked at her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. Is your name really Alice?”

And suddenly she realised.  _Alice in Wonderland._  And here she was, dressed as the Queen of Hearts.

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” she admitted, “I’m studying the circulatory system.”

She’d thought he might have left her at that point. Alice Harvey, too odd, too strange. But Matthew’s smile had been genuine. His interest true. And when he’d leant in at the end of the night after listening to her describe atherosclerosis and infarctions, and murmured, “Until next time?” with no expectation and no attempt at a kiss, but with a smile that told her he would the moment she asked him – she knew that there’d never be another man like Matthew Lawson in her life.

 

* * *

 

Other people have tried to dictate the nature of their marriage.

She’s used to the whispers, the implications it was arranged, or that one of them was in trouble and needed a cover. That she’s his beard. That he only married her out of pity. All because they don’t have a white picket fence and family sedan.

 _He was only looking for someone to take care of him._ Nonsense. They share the work between them. Matthew cooks meals and she organises the house. They both sometimes forget to vacuum the carpets. Matthew washes the dishes in the sink and Alice stands by his side with a tea towel, working her way through pots and pans while describing the day’s autopsies. He hums every now and then to prompt her to continue, and sometimes he’ll ask a question – “Couldn’t that have been a screwdriver?” “Nonsense. Not with those grooves.”  

 _They had no choice._  But they did have a choice. Sometimes she thinks that’s the most precious thing about them. For all the things that have happened in her life beyond her control – a family shattered by alcohol and abuse, her long-lost sister, the whispers behind backs – Alice  _chose_  to marry Matthew. She chose him.

She knew his touch long before she walked the aisle, but they had been careful – Alice planned meticulously – and their marriage was of their own volition, not some shotgun affair. Matthew had whispered the words into her hair one warm summer’s eve, the two of them laid back on a picnic blanket and tucked behind a Moreton Bay Fig in Fitzroy Gardens, her head resting on his shoulder and their fingers tangled in the breeze.

“Marry me?” he asked. But it hadn’t felt like a question.

She’d turned in his arms to face away from his hopeful face, his broad chest against her back and his fingers trembling. He wanted this, wanted her. She could feel it in the way he didn’t push. He chose her, but he wouldn’t take anything. And that meant everything.

So she chose him too. “Yes.”

She can still remember the way his smile had turned to laughter as he kissed her, lips and teeth and gasps for breath; his fingers in her hair and his body a warm, familiar weight pressing her into the blanket. The purest moment of joy she’d ever felt.

But the one that stings the most, that makes her pause on tired days when Matthew is solitary and taciturn, or she feels the world begin to close in around her; the one that makes doubt swim through her veins, is the whispered suggestion that he was lonely.

Perhaps. But perhaps they both were. They’ve lived lonely lives. The disconnect she remembers from her childhood and teenage years didn’t evaporate the moment Matthew Lawson stepped into her life. She still feels the distance between herself and her colleagues, still aches sometimes to make herself understood. And Matthew is quiet, prefers to watch the world unfold around him with a keen eye and well placed words. They’ve both carried their loneliness with strength and dignity, but she likes to think they’ve dismantled it piece by piece with love.

_Love._

That mercurial concept she never thought she’d understand until the day she realised love was the way Matthew’s touch was always soft before becoming insistent, always with a pause to let her decide. The way he smiles into saying her name, like she’s something precious, and smiles into her kisses, familiar and warm. They don’t hold hands in public, rarely exchange endearments or publicise their life. She’s sure there are young constables at the station who aren’t aware she’s married to the Superintendent. And she knows there are people who believe there’s something broken between them, that they’ve remained married out of duty and fear.

But their love is private – it belongs to the safety and sanctity of their home. Slow dances on summer evenings, Nat King Cole and Sinatra in the air. Quiz shows with Matthew shouting eagerly at the television and Alice’s head resting in his lap. Matthew still nuzzles his nose into the back of her neck when he’s half asleep and feeling needy, still leaves her the crossword on Sunday mornings and sits by her side at the kitchen table to watch her eyes dart across the page. He makes useless suggestions to get a rise out of her and she swats him away with the back of her hand and a scolding. He steals her pens and she steals his shirts.

She’ll never grow tired of the hunger in his eyes when she crawls into bed in only his shirt. He knows her quirks and cues, and those nights mean she wants his hands on her skin immediately, slipping over her stomach and breasts and down between her thighs with his fingers and tongue.

And even on their darkest days – his demotion in Melbourne; the endless inquiries; those brief, horrifying hours when she thought she’d lost him to a madman behind the wheel of a car, and the months that followed, when Matthew’s face was twisted with anger and anguish, and even her love and support seemed not enough to make him whole, there was still _something_ between them that made the thought of life without him impossible.

She chose him. He chose her.

Sometimes Matthew half-wakes in the early hours with a sleepy grumble deep in his throat, warm hands seeking her out across the mattress to nudge at her.  _Are you okay? Can I hold you?_

Sometimes it’s enough to curl her fingers through his and feel the weight of his wedding band cool on her skin, the way the callouses on his fingertips drag across her knuckles in soothing motions, lulling them both back to slumber.

Sometimes she pulls until he rolls against her, wrapping his arm tight around her middle so there’s nothing between them; hip to hip, heart to heart. It’s a constant push and pull – sometimes she needs the space between them on the sheets to absorb the reality of his being, and other times she wants him in and around her, pressed into her body until they’re one. There are days in which she needs him so desperately she feels like she’s drowning; his lips on her neck, hands in her hair, scratches and kisses and whispers and moans.

It’s impossible to understand how she found someone who ebbs and flows with her nature, understands that sometimes she needs the constant pressure and motion of the world to disappear, and other times she needs him to hold her until every part of her is pressed back into being.

To find something steady in this frantic, volatile world is all she’s ever longed for. She thought she’d only find it in her work, or in the world of books. Never in a man. But Matthew is a safe harbour.  

And sometimes it’s her own hands reaching for him across the mattress, curling at his bicep or brushing against his cheek.  _I’m here,_ her touch tells him.  _You can need me too._

He falls into her on days when cases rattle him to his bones; when fathers hurt their children and husbands hurt their wives.

Perhaps no one will ever understand the quiet respite they find in each other. The way her mind settles when she can rest against his side, or Matthew’s smile twitches when she strides into the station, reports in hand. Perhaps no one needs to. Perhaps this is theirs alone.

 

* * *

 

The phone doesn’t ring. Alice props herself up against the headboard with a medical journal in hand and her notepad balanced on her knees, scribbling in the dull light cast by the bedside lamp.

The air is cool on this March morning, the chill of Ballarat seeping back now that it’s Autumn. But the day will be fine, bright and clear. Alice has never been a fan of weddings, but for this one she can make an exception. Lucien and Jean have waited so long.

Matthew snuffles beside her and she glances at him fondly. Maybe she’ll find an excuse to sneak off with him during the reception. She’s looking forward to the sight of him in his suit and tie.

“Good morning.”

His eyes flutter open.

“Did I wake you?”

“No, I was dreaming.”

He pushes himself up on strong arms but lets himself fall gently against her side as she leans into him, his head nuzzled in the crook of her collarbone.

“Just you and me, a beach. No murders. No police surgeons. No telephones. Just quiet, and the sun, and maybe a drink. We could go skinny dipping.”

She laughs and he smiles, boyish and proud. Twenty-five years of marriage and he’s still happiest when he makes her giggle.

A holiday does sound wonderful. “Perhaps when Jean and Lucien return?” she suggests.

Matthew hums and settles further into her side, already half asleep again. His voice has the warm, intimate growl she adores. 

“Just you and me, Alice.”


	2. Love is the Crooked Thing

They haven’t always been steady.

There is a time when Matthew is based in Ballarat and Alice has a two year tenure in Melbourne, an opportunity too good to miss but one that draws her away from her husband. Two years in which she feels like she’s holding her breath, waiting for their lives to burst.

They see each other on occasional weekends, snatches of time spent walking in gardens and by the water, or tangled in sheets in her tiny apartment, barely rising for food. But it’s never enough, his kisses goodbye grow more desperate every week and the ache in her chest feels like a cavern of dark fear. For a long time she’s certain that she’ll turn up on their doorstep (because no matter where she lives, the Ballarat house will always be their home) and Matthew will tell her enough is enough. Husbands and wives don’t spend this much time apart. He can’t go on living like this. Maybe he’ll have her clothes packed by the door, or maybe it will be a signed piece of paper.

It’s bullshit, obviously, as Matthew so eloquently tells her. “There’ll never been another woman for me. And even if there is, I don’t want her.”

But it’s difficult. It hurts. Neither of them can deny it. The aching loneliness of an empty bed is worse than the familiar loneliness they’d known before they met each other. She wakes most nights expecting his warmth on the pillow beside her, and is instead met with a cold mattress; the catch in her chest as she remembers he isn’t there.

It worsens over time. And when they are together they end up fighting over the silliest of things, desperate not to fight over the big ones.

Because they’re both too stubborn – but also too respectful – to give in. Matthew would never ask her to leave work for him, but Ballarat is Matthew’s home; he belongs there. Alice understands a part of him would be lost if she asked him to leave.

So instead she surprises him with the news she’s taken the vacancy in Ballarat, appearing on their doorstep on a Wednesday morning when he’s still shuffling around getting ready for work.

She kisses him before he’s had time to realise she’s there, pushing him back through the front door and pressing the signed contract into his chest as he laughs in delight, shocked to have her in his arms without warning. He’s two hours late for work that day and when he finally arrives Bill Hobart’s first to point out his mismatched buttons.

Alice can’t deny that on her first day on the job her heart sinks when Lucien Blake calls her sister. He’s quick to apologise, but she’s wary of the man she’s heard so much about. “I thought you’d be younger,” she tells him, even though she knows he’s Matthew’s age – she wants to know if that will sting.

But Lucien quips “I used to be,” and she sees at once why this man belongs in part to her husband.

“He never told me you had a sense of humour." 

Lucien’s eyebrows arch in surprise.

 

* * *

 

Months pass; Lucien begins to belong to a part of her as well, and she sees the way he and Jean fall for each other – a different love, perhaps, to she and Matthew. But love is like that. Essential to all but entirely unique.

She should know by now that when things feel this calm that somewhere a bough is about to break. Matthew is sent back to Melbourne, and Alice feels the world tip.

Demoted and forced through endless inquires, he bears the pain with the strength and dignity she remembers from their youth. And every time she raises the idea of coming back to Melbourne his face turns to stone. "This is your workplace. This is our home. They can tear me down but god, Alice, I won’t let them touch you.”

How could she possibly argue?

So they spend the following few months in limbo. A familiar pattern, though one she hates to resume. Only this time she’s the one in Ballarat keeping their home warm as they take turns going back and forth. She realises soon that Matthew feels uncomfortable in Ballarat – remembers the old fear that he would lose a part of himself if he was ever forced away – and decides to spend more weekends in Melbourne.

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t tell him at first. Their entire life already feels paper thin and about to tear.

Orton’s hands wander and the humiliation of being punished for speaking out is enough to turn her quiet. She longs for Matthew’s steady presence beside her, but it’s difficult to remember how to be open when he’s not there.

It’s not until Orton’s throat is slashed and she’s dragged through the station and public eye, somehow finding herself the reason behind the death of a man she never wanted anything to do with in the first place, that she’s reminded again how cruel mankind can be. Munro spits her marriage back in her face, tries to imply that she was lonely without her husband in town, that she sought Orton’s advances. She’s not usually a violent person, but the disgust she feels when Munro says Matthew’s name is enough to drive her there. She vows, in that moment, to never stop until Matthew’s good name and title is restored.

Lucien sits by her side outside the station and lets her cry, and for the first time in months a weight lifts. “Can you drive me to Melbourne?” she asks without thinking, and before she can take it back Lucien is bundling her into the car, already asking if she wants to duck by the house for supplies or wants to head straight there.

She falls into Matthew’s arms and sobs for hours. He holds her long into the night.

The following morning he’s resolute. This ends now. The distance between them is too much, but he’s not giving up on her. And he has proof now of what that bastard is doing.

“Let’s go home, sweetheart,” he tells her. 

So they do.

 

* * *

 

For a while things are calm. Lucien follows Jean to Adelaide and Matthew comes home with a smile and a swing in his step, twirls her around the house dancing. “What on earth are you so happy about?” she laughs.

“Nothing,” he tells her, “Everything. You.”

They let dinner burn and he carries her to bed.

But then she receives a phone call. A nurse from the hospital. A car accident. Crushed legs. Screams of pain.  _Matthew._

For a few brief and terrifying hours she thinks she’s about to lose him, and her entire world halts. Maybe she can’t go on without him.

She tells Lucien that later, as they’re sat by Matthew’s bedside, and he grips her hand and doesn’t let go.

 

* * *

 

The following few months are their worst. She works part time and spends the rest of her days with Matthew at the rehabilitation clinic. He’s dark. Angry. Bitter. Pushes her away, but then sometimes holds her so close she thinks she’s about to break under the heavy weight of his grief.

It’s the first time she’s ever felt hurt because of him. Not by him, necessarily, but by the pain he refuses to share. She worries in those six months if this will be what breaks them. Not for lack of love, but for her inability to fix them both.

Back in Ballarat she watches Lucien torn between Mei Lin and Jean, the pain they endure to be together, and feels angry that they’re being forced through this at their age. Haven’t they all suffered enough?

And when Lucien and Jean are finally able to be together, she packs her bags immediately and returns to Melbourne. It’s the middle of the night and Matthew is asleep but she crawls into bed behind him and falls asleep with her forehead tucked into his neck. He wakes to the clean scent of her, the warmth of her breath and a sense that something has shifted between them.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, kissing the bridge of her nose, her chin, her cheeks, her lips.

She watches him fall apart over the next few weeks, lets him shout and be angry, lets him be soft and warm. Lets them both breathe. The first night he falls asleep with his fingers brushing down her arm, and few days later his arm is around her waist, and eventually one night they fall asleep with his nose buried in her neck and her legs across his, a messy, beautiful tangle. 

They fall back together in small bits and pieces; with time, patience and love. And when those in charge decide to send Matthew back to Ballarat, she goes with him. They’re a package deal now. No more lonely nights or commutes.

 

* * *

 

Their house floods and they’re forced to move in with Jean and Lucien, months that seem to go on forever with the five of them stumbling over each other. Jean and Lucien try to sort out their lives and Charlie tries to sort out his relationship with Rose. For once Alice feels like she has authority over a relationship matter – at least she and Matthew had figured out how to make it down the aisle.

There are too many people in one house, and she misses the privacy of their home. But it’s nice in a strange way. Feels like the loud, loving family neither she or Matthew grew up with.

They finally move back home a week before Jean and Lucien’s wedding, but not until after Alice overhears Matthew and Lucien one night.

“What if I don’t deserve her?” Lucien asks, and Matthew scoffs.

“You don’t. Of course you don’t. We never do.”

“You don’t think you deserve Alice?”

“I could live a thousand good lives and never deserve that woman. But look, none of that matters. She chose me. God knows why, but she did. And Jean chose you. And all you have to do is be the best version of Lucien Blake you can for her. We wake up each day and we try to be the best husbands we can.”

Maybe she doesn’t deserve Matthew either.

But he’s right. It doesn’t matter. She chose him. He chose her.

 

* * *

 

Matthew crawls into bed sometime later, whiskey on his breath and feet cold. She turns in his arms, running her fingers under the hem of his loosely buttoned shirt.

“How much did you hear?” he asks her.

“Not much. I liked it when you threatened him.”

Matthew hums, a low, rumbly noise and cards his fingers through her short hair. “Good.”

She lets him settle into bed, shuffling until he’s comfortable. “If you hold him down I know plenty of ways to make him suffer. There’s this thing I could do, with a scalpel -”

He bursts out laughing, deep and rich and beautiful to her ears. He holds her closer and presses a kiss to her forehead and cheeks, and later when he’s asleep – soft snores and warm hands – she kisses the underside of his jaw.

“I don’t deserve you, Matthew Lawson.”

She falls asleep in his arms.


	3. An ever-fixed mark

It’s difficult, in the days and months after Lucien disappears, for anyone to feel normal. Matthew and Alice dance around Jean – trying to remain calm, trying to be supportive; trying to balance belief with the overwhelming sense that he’s gone. They’re so focused on holding the world around them together that they hardly notice when things between them start to crack. 

It’s not cataclysmic – there’s no argument, no anger. Nothing that spells doom or distress. Just a creeping sense that they’ve drifted and don’t know how to get back to each other, not without unravelling all they’ve been holding down the last few months – and the thought of that is impossible. 

Perhaps it starts when Alice starts pulling away in public, turning down his light suggestions for dinner or a movie, or walking a slight step ahead in the park at dusk. They’ve never been affectionate in public – but Matthew feels the space opening up between them like a wound, and can’t understand why.

“You know you were cleared for the position,” he tells her, voice gruff but firm even as Alice flits around him in the morgue. 

“Yes, but people talk.”

“Who’s talking, Alice?”

“People!”

It’s useless trying to argue with her. 

—

It comes to a head midway through a case; a light touch to her side as she passes him in the station and instead of the usual way she moves around him she freezes solid. Matthew catches her eye and her glare is impossible.

For the first time in years he feels completely seperate from her. 

“We have to talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about Matthew, I’m simply tired.”

“Nonsense! You’ve been pulling away for months.”

“You’ve been pushing for months!”

“You’re my wife, Alice!”

“I’m the Police Surgeon, Matthew!”

He stares at her, unable to understand. 

“After all we’ve been through – all that has happened. I can’t give them a reason to doubt either of us.”

She turns on her heel and marches away. 

—

Sometimes, thirty years can feel like an eternity. 

Other times, it reminds him that he knows her better than he knows himself. 

And if there’s one thing he knows about Alice, it’s that her anger is never straightforward. 

He slips the letter across the kitchen table and watches her as she reads it, resisting the urge to reach out and take her hand even as tears cloud her eyes. 

“He wrote that the last time he was fired. He knew they were looking elsewhere, but you were the only one he trusted with the job.”

Alice folds the letter slowly and sets it down on the table. When she speaks, her voice is firm. 

“It shouldn’t be mine.”

“I know. But you’re wrong.”

“Matthew – “

“I know you mean he should be here. It should be his. I understand that. But he’s gone, Alice. He’s gone. And unless he returns there is no one on this earth more capable, or deserving, or right for this position than you. He knew that. I know that. And everyone in that station knows it too.”

She doesn’t speak, but her hand slips across the table and grasps at his own, and as their fingers tangle Matthew feels something small click back into place. 

—

Weeks later, as young Geoffrey Roper weaves his way through their overflowing library with ease, Alice leans against Matthew’s side to watch the boy. 

“I hear  _The Birds_  is still in cinemas,” she ponders. Matthew grins. 

“Is that so?”


End file.
